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The award-winning Uplift novels comprise one of the greatest achievements in science fiction history. Dramatic, thought-provoking, and inventive, these books describe a fully realized world rich in character, detail, and ideas. Now Uplift author David Brin collaborates with acclaimed artist Kevin Lenagh to compile the definitive guide to the species, societies, and technology of one of the greatest feats of literary world-building ever accomplished.

Here in the form of a handbook for Terran field agents is a detailed look at Uplift's many alien races--from the friendly Tymbrimi to the warlike Tandu, from the wise and enigmatic Kanten to the fiercely reptilian Soro, from the bureaucratic Hoon to the manipulative Thennanin--their physiology, psychology, history; their clans and alliances; and their shifting attitudes toward Earth and its representatives.

Here, too, is a history of Earth's contact and challenging interactions with the mysterious and powerful Civilization of Five Galaxies, a look at its institutions, languages, and customs, plus a time line of momentous events going back 3 billion years. For the millions of fans of the Uplift novels, this long-awaited guide will be an essential reference work, filled with vital information and never-before-seen illustrations that reveal, for the first time in one volume, the keys to the ambitious vision and bold speculation of the Uplift universe.

Ridley Scott's 1979 Alien has attained classic status and is one of the most analysed films by scholars. But until now, there have been no published studies of its audiences. This book presents the findings of a major project exploring how different kinds of viewers engage with the film. Based on over 1,000 responses, the authors uncover some surprising patterns and tendencies. These disclose, among other things, the remarkable role played by parents and other relatives in 'gifting' the film to their children, raising important questions about the idea of 'age-inappropriate' viewing, a fascinating ambiguity over the role of 'acting' in the notorious 'chestburster scene' and an important shift in the way audiences see Alien as 'more than just a film' once imitations and parodies become prevalent. Some particularly long and rich responses reveal how this film can go on arousing strong visceral responses, even after repeated viewings. Richly illustrated with quotations, this book will shift current understandings of horror film audiences.

An original young adult novel of the Alien universe

Olivia and her twin sister Viola have been dragged around the universe for as long as they can remember. Their parents, both xenobiologists, are always in high demand for their research into obscure alien biology.

Just settled on a new colony world, they discover an alien threat unlike anything they've ever seen. And suddenly the sisters' world is ripped apart.

On the run from terrifying aliens, Olivia's knowledge of xenobiology and determination to protect her sister are her only weapons as the colony collapses into chaos. But then a shocking family secret bursts open -- one that's as horrifying to Olivia as the aliens surrounding them.

The creatures infiltrate the rich wildlife on this untouched colony world -- and quickly start adapting. Olivia's going to have to adapt, too, if she's going to survive...

The Covenant mission is the most ambitious endeavor in the history of Weyland-Yutani. A ship bound for Origae-6, carrying two thousand colonists beyond the limits of known space, this is make-or-break investment for the corporation--and for the future of all mankind.

Yet there are those who would die to stop the mission. As the colony ship hovers in Earth orbit, several violent events reveal a deadly conspiracy to sabotage the launch. While Captain Jacob Branson and his wife Daniels complete their preparations, security chief Daniel Lopé recruits the final key member of his team. Together they seek to stop the perpetrators before the ship and its passengers can be destroyed.

An original novel by the acclaimed ALAN DEAN FOSTER, author of the groundbreaking Alien novelization, Origins is the official chronicle of the events that led up to Alien: Covenant. It also reveals the world the colonists left behind.

Ridley Scott returns to the universe he created, with Alien: Covenant, a new chapter in his groundbreaking Alien adventure.

The crew of the colony ship Covenant, bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, discovers what they think is an uncharted paradise. But it is actually a dark, dangerous world. When they uncover a threat beyond their imaginations, they must attempt a harrowing escape.

Acclaimed author Alan Dean Foster also returns to the universe he first encountered with the official novelization of the original Alien film. Alien: Covenant is the pivotal adventure that preceded that seminal film, and leads to the events that will yield one of the most terrifying sagas of all time.

A dramatic new Alien novel, as Weyland-Yutani seeks to recover from the failure of Hadley's Hope, and successfully weaponize the Xenomorphs.

With the failure of Hadley's Hope, Weyland-Yutani has suffered a devastating setback--the loss of the Aliens they aggressively sought to exploit. Yet there's a reason the Company has risen to the top of the food chain. True to form, they have a redundancy already in place... the facility known as The Cold Forge.

Remote station RB-232 has become their greatest asset in weaponizing the Xenomorphs. However, when Dorian Sudler is sent to RB-232 to assess their progress, he discovers that there's a spy aboard--someone who doesn't necessarily act in the company's best interests. For Dorian, this is the most unforgivable of sins. When found, the perpetrator will be eliminated with extreme prejudice. If unmasked, though, this person may be forced to destroy the entire station... and everyone on board. That is, if the Xenomorphs don't do the job first...

A crew of spaceship Nostromo is suddenly woken up from a cryogenic sleep because of mysterious signals coming from an unknown planet and received by a ship computer. The astronauts land on the planet surface and go to investigate an alien spaceship where one of them is attacked by an alien which fasten itself on his face. When the crew returns to their ship and abandon the planet, nobody forefeels that the real horror will begin very soon...

In the sequel to the 1979 film Alien, Ellen Ripley is persuaded to return to planet LV-426, where her crew encountered the hostile Alien creature. There they discovered hundreds of eggs, and just one alien slaughtered everyone but Ripley. A colony has been established there, but suddenly all contact with the settlers has been lost. This time she's accompanied by a unit of Colonial Marines, but even their firepower may not be enough for them to survive and learn the fate of the colony known as Hadley's Hope.

Fury 161 is a wretched planet – a penal colony and industrial complex manned by violent prisoners. When an escape pod from the USS Sulaco crash-lands there, Ellen Ripley appears to be the only passenger left alive.

Then inmates begin to die, all at the hands of another survivor. A creature which encounters Ripley, and spares her life! Desperate to know why, she seeks out an answer – and discovers terror unlike any she's ever known.

Science fiction master Alan Dean Foster returns to the Alien universe to reveal the ultimate destinies of Ellen Ripley and her eternal foe, the xenomorph known as the Alien.

This is the official adaptation of the original screenplay for Alien 3, written by William Gibson, the award-winning science fiction author of the cyberpunk cult classic Neuromancer. You'll see familiar characters and places – but not all is the same in this horrifying Cold War thriller.

After the deadly events of the film Aliens, the spaceship Sulaco carrying the sleeping bodies of Ripley, Hicks, Newt, and Bishop are intercepted by the Union of Progressive Peoples. What the U.P.P. forces don't expect is another deadly passenger that is about to unleash chaos between two governmental titans intent on developing the ultimate cold war weapon of mass destruction.

At the farthest reaches of the solar system, Ellen Ripley awakens on board the space station Auriga. Her last memory is of her own fiery death. And yet she is somehow alive. Ripley discovers that her "resurrection" is a result of an incredible experiment which has altered both her and the creature she has been carrying. To combat the incalculable alien menace, she teams up with a renegade band of space smugglers.

A direct sequel to Aliens and Alien 3--Weyland-Yutani, the Colonial Marines, and Bishop's creator all pursue the android for the deadly Xenomorph data contained in his brain...

"Do me a favor. Disconnect me. I could be reworked, but I'll never be top of the line again. I'd rather be nothing." Lance Bishop, model 341-B, on Fiorina 161

The USCSS Patna has been found.

Although the synthetic Bishop asked to be shut down forever, his creator has other plans. Michael Bishop seeks the Xenomorph knowledge stored in the android's mind, and brings Bishop back to life--but for what reason? No longer an employee of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, Michael tells his creation that he seeks to advance medical research for the benefit of humanity. Yet where does he get the resources needed to advance his work, and with whom do his new allegiances lie?

The USCSS Patna is pursued by Colonial Marines Captain Marcel Apone, commander of the Il Conde and younger brother of Master Sergeant Alexander Apone, one of the casualties of the doomed mission to LV-426. Also on his trail are the "Dog Catchers," commandos employed by Weyland-Yutani.

There are many who would profit from Lance Bishop's intimate knowledge of the deadliest creatures in the galaxy.

In a dramatic twist, this novel will return us to that time, to Ellen Ripley, and to never-before-revealed secrets of the Weyland-Yutani Corporations... secrets which launch a terrifying new adventure that bridges the gap between Alien and Aliens.

Officially sanctioned and true to the Alien canon, Alien: Out of the Shadows expands upon the well-loved mythos and is a must for all Alien fans.

As a deputy commissioner for the ICC, Alan Decker's job is to make sure the settlements on LV178 follow all the rules, keeping the colonists safe. But the planet known as New Galveston holds secrets, lurking deep beneath the toxic sands dubbed the Sea of Sorrows.

The Weyland-Yutani Corporation has secrets of its own, as Decker discovers when he is forced to join a team of mercenaries sent to investigate an ancient excavation. Somewhere in that long-forgotten dig lies the thing the company wants most in the universe--a living Xenomorph.

Decker doesn't understand why they need him, until his own past comes back to haunt him. Centuries ago, his ancestor fought the Aliens, launching a bloody vendetta that was never satisfied. That was when the creatures swore revenge on the Destroyer... Ellen Ripley.

When Ellen Ripley finally returns to Earth, she learns that the planet LV-426--now called Acheron--has been colonized. But LV-426 is where Ripley and the crew of the Nostromo found the original Xenomorph--the killing machine known as the Alien.

Protected by the Colonial Marines, the colonists seek to terraform the storm-swept planet. Two such residents are Anne and Russell Jorden, seeking a fortune that eluded them on Earth. On Acheron, Anne gives birth to the colony's first newborn. Rebecca Jordan, also known as Newt.

The wildcatters discover a vast, decaying spaceship. The horseshoe-shaped vessel is of particular interest to Weyland-Yutani, and may be the answer to their dreams. But what Anne and Russ find on board proves to be the stuff, not of dreams, but of nightmares.

This exquisitely produced, Smythe-sewn, embossed hardcover volume features an Aliens tale written by today's master of horror comics, Steve Bissette, accompanied by 24 full-color paintings by the most sought-after painter in the field, Dave Dorman.

An Alien has been detected on board a space station orbiting Earth, and a crack extermination team sets out to destroy it. The success of their mission depends on one man's sinister secret.

The story is presented in the traditional text format accompanied by full-page color paintings by Dorman. This book also features a dust jacket illustrated by Dorman.

Wilks was a space marine with a near-fatal flaw: he had a heart. Billie was a child, the only survivor of a far-flung colony outpost. Thrown together in the last hellish night of an alien invasion, Billie and Wilks helped each other get out alive. Thirteen years later Wilks is in prison, and Billie lives in a mental institution, the nightmare memories of the massacre at Rim seared into her mind.

Now the government has tapped Wilks to lead an expedition to the aliens' home planet to bring back a live alien. But the competition on Earth to develop the aliens as a new weapons system is brutal. When Wilks's team departs on their mission, a trained assassin trails them. And what follows is no less than guerrilla warfare on the aliens' planet - and alien conquest on Earth!

Wilks, Billie, and Bueller were the last survivors of a devastating assault on the aliens' home planet. But once their retum to the solar system made them refugees once more, fleeing Earth and its alien infestation in a desperate attempt to stay alive. Now, in an otherwise unmanned military transport, they hurtle through space. Destination: unknown.

Little do they know that the cargo they carry with them is a legacy of death that they will ultimately have to face. Nor do they know that they head toward a remote colony and military outpost. This pocket of humanity at the very edges of space is at the mercy of a general names Spears with an agenda all his own. Now Billie, Wilks, and Bueller face a new nightmare, and it is nothing they could ever have imagined: a gift of madness from an alien world, unbalanced mind, and the experiences of a mysterious pilot named Lieutenant Ellen Ripley.

Billie only wanted what all children want -- the warmth and security of family, the human connectedness that comes from belonging. What she got was a nightmare without end.

Ripley is a leader of humanity's forces against a new invasion where aliens have overrun the Earth--and the human population has been abandoned to alien appetites.

Their queen is dead and the hive mind has been left to flounder on its own. On a world bereft of its only guiding force a schism is taking place: two strains of alien, formerly united by one all-powerful mother, now divide their forces for a world-shattering, acid-drenched war.

On Earth, after a generation of rebuilding in the wake of alien infestation, athletes from every corner of the world are flocking to humanity's Goodwill Games. But some come with a dangerous new tool: a drug called Fire, distilled from the very essence of the aliens' body chemistry. The military wants it, Pharmaceutical kingpin Daniel Grant wants it. And the only place the essential ingredient can be found is on a world convulsed by alien holocaust.

This time the humans are taking the offensive! Stan Myakovsky is a once-famous scientist fallen on hard times. Now he dodges spaceship repo men and dreams of the marketability of his cybernetic ant. Then a woman named Julie Lish walks into his life. She is beautiful, mysterious, and totally amoral. She is also skilled in the arts of thievery and Oriental self-defense. What's more, she has a plan so outrageous there might be one chance in a million to pull it off.

Together Stan and Julie become the most unlikely pair of pirates in the universe. With a hijacked spaceship and a crew of hardcase misfits, they're searching for the ultimate pot of gold at the end of a bloody intergalactic rainbow: royal jelly from an alien hive. The only problem is that the fortune lies on the universe's most godforsaken planet. And once they get their hands on it, the'll have to fight their way past the aliens to get off the planet alive.

Professor Ernst Kliest wants to create a tame alien by genetically engineering creatures with the violence bred out of them. Alas, his dream withers when spies infiltrate the base to steal his research and his supposedly tame creation goes on a murderous rampage, killing humans and aliens alike.

Colonel Doctor Paul Church has discovered that aliens communicate telepathically and that human will can alter an alien's behavior. Colonel Doctor Tony Crespi is happy to be in on the action--until he discovers the truth. Church's experiments are only a front for one of the most warped projects ever, one that could turn the toughest of Army stomachs.

New York City, 2124: The streets are clogged with the Jelly-addicted and the homeless, while the elite cluster in glittering office towers. Among them: the ruthless head of an entertainment conglomerate who seeks revenge by giving a maniacal artist his ultimate desire - an alien.

Damon Eddington will shock the world with his newest composition, the Symphony of Hate. Wrapped within its bizarre music can be found the most tortured of human sounds, combined with the razor-steel screams of a Homeworld alien. Yet the supreme cry continues to elude him and, obsessed with complete his musical creation and controlled by his need for the life-form's harshest voice, Eddington knows that the sound he seeks lies deep inside the ruthless creature he has named Mozart. And he will stop at nothing to free it....

It is called a Berserker teamreckless, desperate volunteers recruited by the Company to destroy alien infestations.

Based on the spaceship Nemesis, it consists of three brutal ex-cons who do all the grunt work and the Berserker itself, code-named MAX: an armed and armored exoskeleton powered by the living brain of what was once a human, configured into an unstoppable killing machine.

When the Nemesis is sent to a massive space station, D.S. 949, the team finds an alien hive, the largest in history, with nearly a thousand hapless humans cocooned and incubated. The team mission: to destroy the aliens while leaving the terminal intact. The mission seems like suicide to the bug hunters and their small support staff. And that is perfectly fine for the Company... which wants no witnesses left to the terrifying secret of D.S. 949.

THE ADVENTURES OF ELLEN RIPLEY CONTINUE!

Nearly three centuries ago, the Wyland-Yutani starship Nostromo investigated what appeared to be a distress call emanating from the barren planet Acheron.

What the crew of the Nostromo found was an alien life form-a hidious, slavering killer, quicker and more powerful than anything known before. Only Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley managed to escape with her life, destroying the Nostromo rather than giving the monster a chance to reach Earth.

But she hadn't seen the last of the breed. Now, centuries after the death of the original Ripley, her clone has taken up the fight. And she has found, with the help of an android named Call, a brutal hired gun named Johner, and a paraplegic mechanic named Vrless, that there is more to the alien horror than meets the eye...

In an inhospitable galaxy, the planet Rosamond 6 is a rare find. With a moon, an atmosphere, and a thriving bio-system the world has all the keys necessary for human habitation. But while Rosamond 6 may look like an oasis among the stars, it harbors a fatal secret: the world is infested with the murderous xenomorphic aliens that have wiped out every life form in their path. Eager to prove her theory that the aliens can be reasoned with, anthropologist Jocasta Malvaux has set up an observation post on Rosamond 6.

But when the monsters become aware of Malvaux and her expedition, something unexpected happens: the aliens don't attack. When Jocasta's son Rory races to the planet to save her, she won't leave. What is the secret behind the aliens' seeming lack of concern for the humans? Are the monsters evolving? Or is it simply a matter of time before every person on the planet is in a fight for their lives? The war is about to begin.

On the spaceship Umiak, an elite troupe of cadets is forced into servitude by an unscrupulous captain taking the ship to a smuggler's rendezvous. During the transaction aboard the eerily silent Virginia, the cadets unwittingly transport an unexpected cargo: a hive of hibernating aliens. As the aliens begin to awake, a terrifying battle erupts between the cadets, the smugglers, the captain, and the emergent monsters. The cadets soon realize that in space, no one can hear them scream.

Someone on Earth knew about the aliens. Someone battled them, and survived. Before Ripley, there was a first encounter. Aliens and humans have fought before! When a human spaceship discovers a vast egg-shaped vessel in Saturn's orbit, the crew powers in to investigate. Thinking the ship might contain usable metal for Earth, they force their way aboard. Three teams split up to explore the ship. Already the aliens have awoken. The first of all the battles unfolds.

Thomas Chase wakes up from cryosleep to his first day at a new job - as a pilot for a contraband drug company dropping a shipment on Fantasia, a rock-planet terraformed to hide an elaborate drug manufacturing operation. Everything from synthetic heroin to MX7 is cooked here, in protected caves guard-dogged by the savage Aliens. When Chase's craft touches down on Fantasia, a chain of events begins that can not be stopped.

As criminals and competitors try to take over the drug-empire from the dangerous kingpin, Chase and his brother Pete are caught in the crossfire... with the Aliens adding blood to the mix.

After thirty years of cryogenic sleep, Detective Anders Kramm awakens to a changed world. The alien threat has been subdued. Company interests dominate universal trade. Terraforming is big money now, with powerful men willing to do anything to assure dominance over other worlds.

But Kramm has a secret. He knows why The Company killed twelve of its top scientists. He knows why the aliens have been let loose on the surface of a contested planet. He knows that the information he has is valuable, and that The Company will do everything it can to stop him from telling his secret to the world. Haunted by memories of the brutal murder of his family, Kramm is set adrift amid billion dollar stakes... with aliens around every corner, waiting for him to make a mistake!